Grade 3 Puritan School Lesson

Straight from thethe Source Close Readings for Elementary Social Studies A Puritan School Lesson for Children Grade Level: 3 MA Standards: 3.4 Describe the daily life, education, and work of the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Common Core Standards: RI 3.1, RI 3.8, RI 3.9, W 3.1 Image Source: The New-England Primer Enlarged. For the more easy attaining the true Reading of English. To which is added, The Assembly’s Catechism. Philadelphia: B. Franklin, and D. Hall, 1764. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. http://brbl- dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3555954?image_id =1227769 Abstract: Students closely read an excerpt from a popular 17th-century textbook written for children in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They practice reading for main ideas, using language and tone to make inferences, and integrating ideas with their knowledge of colonial New England. Students also compare the list of “promises” in the excerpt to the Pledge of Allegiance—another list of promises that many children memorize in the 21st century—and to Anne Bradstreet’s 1659 poem “In Reference to Her Children,” which offers a competing perspective on Puritan views of children. Discussion questions, writing prompts, and a vocabulary list tied to Common Core standards are provided. Straight from the Source: A Puritan School Lesson for Children Rationale and Source Context: The education of children was a high priority for Puritan communities on both sides of the Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Bible-centered colonies of New England, reading scriptures was a central religious obligation. Puritan theories of governance also depended on a literate citizenry to make and read the common laws. It was the responsibility of each Puritan household to provide basic literacy and numeracy to children, servants, and other dependents in the home. Beginning in the 1640s, Puritan leaders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony enshrined these beliefs in their legal code, requiring families and eventually towns to take responsibility for children’s education. In 1647, the colony became one of the first places in the world to establish public funding for schools when it ordered that “every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read….”1 For more than a century, the primary vehicle for the education of children in the English Protestant colonies was the New England Primer, which was first published in Boston by Puritan dissenter Benjamin Harris around 1687. The earliest editions have not survived, but the primer was an immediate success, and numerous editions followed. Historians estimate that three million copies were sold in North America during the colonial period.2 Harris’s primer combined basic literacy and numeracy—the “ABCs”—with the teaching of prayers and religious tenets meant to shape moral character. Legal requirements aside, not all 17th-century New Englanders had access to public education. Many towns in the colony failed to provide a school, despite the threat of fines. And even though towns were required to hire teachers at public expense, attendance wasn’t always free, and parents weren’t obligated to send their children to school. Moreover, some towns barred girls from attending these “common schools” altogether. Consequently, many girls, as well as the children of servants, apprentices, African Americans, and the poor, were taught reading and writing haphazardly or not at all. Meanwhile, unruly or misbehaving children were punished, sometimes severely. Other passages from the primer, like this couplet for the letter “F”, show the Puritans’ dim view of children’s behavior: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it from him.” The brief excerpt from the New England Primer included here focuses on the obligations of New England school children in the 17th century. It outlines a short list of “promises” that children were required to memorize. Use this list of promises to build students’ understanding of what Puritans considered important in the lives of their children. Use it also to delineate the hierarchy of Puritan society, in which young people were expected to submit to the authority of adults in Puritan households, towns, and schools. Students may recognize that, in some ways, these 17th-century promises mimic those found in the version of the Pledge of Allegiance that most American children memorize and recite today. Both, for example, acknowledge a higher religious power, espouse an idea of fairness, and encourage loyalty to secular authorities. Much in this excerpt from the New England Primer stands in contrast not only to the Pledge of Allegiance of the present day, but also to at least one contemporary consideration of Puritan children: Anne Bradstreet’s “In Reference to Her Children,” a poem she wrote in 1659 about her Straight from the Source: A Puritan School Lesson for Children love for her eight children (included here in the Post-Reading questions). Bradstreet was among the colony’s first settlers—she landed in 1630—and also one of its most educated. She was the first woman in North America to have her literary work published; her first volume of poetry, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, appeared in London in 1650. However, while her work received many favorable reviews, some male contemporaries questioned whether she, as a woman, could have actually authored the poems. To stave off accusations of immorality, her brother-in-law and publisher, John Woodbridge, also wrote in the preface to The Tenth Muse that Bradstreet had not shirked her wifely duties in the home. Rather, he argued, her poems were “the fruit but of some few hours, curtailed from sleep and other refreshments.”3 As students think about the “promises” in the New England Primer, have them also think about the lives of 17th-century children as seen through these different sources—including who might and might not have had access to the primer—and the ways in which school life in the 21st century compares.* *Consider also pairing this lesson with the third-grade Straight from the Source lesson Biography of a Young African- American Author, which highlights the life and literary contributions of Phillis Wheatley, another early American poet whose career defied 17th-century gender and racial norms. 1 The General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony, November 11, 1647, as quoted in Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Vintage, 1958), 300. 2 Paul Leicester Ford, The New-England Primer: A History of its Origin and Development. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1897), 19. While Ford’s study of the New England Primer is more than 100 years old, his figure of 3 million copies sold is still frequently cited. 3 John Woodbridge in the preface to The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America by Anne Bradstreet, as quoted in Wendy Martin, “Anne Bradstreet,” Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and- poets/poets/detail/anne-bradstreet. Original Source: Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Primer Enlarged. For the more easy attaining the true reading of English. To which is added, The Assembly’s catechism. Printed and sold by B. Franklin, and D. Hall, in Market-street. Philadelphia, 1764, 11. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. http://brbl-zoom.library.yale.edu/viewer/1227787 Text Complexity (Grade-Level Edited Text)* Lexile ATOS Degrees of Flesch-Kincaid Reading Power 680L 5.6 N/A 4.2 * Two versions of the source are presented here: the original text and a grade-level edited text. The readability measures listed here refer to the grade-level edited version of the text, not the original text. Straight from the Source: A Puritan School Lesson for Children Suggested Guidance for Teaching Close Reading of Text with Accompanying Materials Pre-Reading 1. This document is best used when teaching about Puritans and the early settlement of Massachusetts and New England. 2. Inform students that Puritan children in early New England were required to learn how to read and write. Some 17th-century students attended schools, just like most children do today, but many others learned at home. Millions of children, in schools and at home, learned to read and write by using a textbook called the New England Primer. 3. Have students read the text independently and annotate for understanding. 1st Reading: 4. Introduce the text. Focus on these questions for the first reading of the Key Ideas and text: Details a. List three duties from this list that were expected of children. b. What is meant by the word “man?” What word might people today use instead? c. What is one duty that is similar to a rule in your classroom? What is one duty that is very different from the rules in your classroom? d. When you put all the rules together, what do you think Puritan parents wanted most from their children? Which words tell you this? (Note for teachers: words like obey, honour, and follow suggest that Puritans primarily wanted their children to be obedient.) 2nd Reading: 5. Focus on these questions for the second reading of the text: Craft and a. What is the first duty that is listed for children? What is the second Structure duty? Why do you think the writer might have put them in this order? b. Why do you think all of the “promises” begin with the same two words? c. Why do you think children were supposed to memorize these promises instead of simply read them? 3rd Reading: 6.

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